Profile of Stephen H. Schneider

Polar regions found warming fast, raising sea levels

Posted 2009/02/25 at 12:17 pm EST

GENEVA, Feb. 25, 2009 (Reuters) — The Arctic and Antarctic regions are warming faster than previously thought, raising world sea levels and making drastic global climate change more likely than ever, international scientists said on Wednesday.

An undated handout photo from the Center for Northern Studies shows the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf disintegrating. REUTERS/Denis Sarrazin/Center for Northern Studies/Handout

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New evidence of the trend was uncovered by wide-ranging research in the two areas over the past two years in a United Nations-backed program dubbed the International Polar Year (IPY), they said.

"Snow and ice are declining in both polar regions, affecting human livelihoods as well as local plant and animal life in the Arctic as well as global atmospheric circulation and sea-level," according to a summary of a report by the researchers.

An assessment of the findings of the research was still being refined, said the IPY's "State of Polar Research" report.

"But it now appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing," it said.

"New data also confirm that warming in the Antarctic is much more widespread than it was thought prior to IPY."

More than 63 countries and some 10,000 scientists took part in the $1.5 billion program, which began in March 2007 and ends next month.

IPY experts told a news conference that melting appeared to be speeding up, especially in the Western Antarctic region that stretches to near the southern tip of Latin America and which had earlier been thought stable.

"One could expect to see quite dramatic changes in weather in Chile and Argentina as a result," said Ian Allison, a co-chairman of the program's steering committee.

Such a trend would be felt around the world.

David Carlson, director of IPY's international program office, said levels of salt in the sea around the Antarctic were growing, indicating that the continent's underlying ice shelves were melting.

But the experts said the exact speed of these developments was difficult to measure, and the global effect they were likely to have impossible to predict accurately given the current research tools available.

The overall global warming trend has long been tracked by another U.N.-sponsored body, the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The mandate of the IPY, which is linked with the IPCC, was to focus on what is happening around the poles.

Like the IPCC, the IPY experts said even a relatively small rise in sea-levels could threaten huge populations of cities in low-lying coastal areas, mainly in developing countries but in Europe and North America as well.

The report said research under the IPY had revealed larger-than-expected pools of carbon in Arctic permafrost, or frozen terrain, which further warming could release into the atmosphere in the form of greenhouse gas.

But it gave no estimates of the size of these pools.

While the challenges to funding posed by the economic crisis, the report said governments need to keep pumping money into North and South Pole research in order to keep tabs on global warming pressures.

It was the fourth internationally coordinated scientific program on the polar regions, following previous efforts undertaken in 1882-83, 1932-33 and 1957-58.

The IPY was organized by the independent International Council for Science and the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

(Editing by Katie Nguyen)

Link to article: http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre51o4zx-us-climate-polars/

What if … ?

January 15, 2009 · 141 Comments

Carbon dioxide emissions could last millennia

by Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers, February 24, 2009

WASHINGTON — Until now, most discussion of climate change has been about what scientific evidence shows is likely to happen between now and 2100. However, scientific research shows that the carbon dioxide gas released from burning fossil fuels lasts in the atmosphere much longer than mere decades.

David Archer, a leading climate researcher who teaches at the University of Chicago, has written a new book that looks at carbon dioxide's "long tail" and what it means for changes on Earth in the future.

The remaining carbon dioxide — the long tail — would stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, leaving a warmer climate. About 10 percent of it would still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years, Archer wrote in "The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate."

"Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years," Archer wrote.

Because of the long life of CO2 from fossil fuels, the climate impacts would last for many thousands of years. Ice sheets would melt, raising seas high enough to swamp 10 percent or more of the world's agricultural land. Other climate impacts could include uncomfortable heat and drier continental interiors, Archer tells his readers. "In the long run, it could be a steep price to pay for a century or so of fossil fuel energy."

Archer studies the carbon cycle of Earth as it interacts with global climate. His slim book is a clear explanation of carbon dioxide and climate change for non-scientists. It also explains how the climate has changed in the distant past and looks ahead to the deep future.

His work has been a part of what John Holdren, whom President Obama named as his science adviser, has called the "tremendous effort" among scientists to reach a "center of gravity" in the understanding of climate change. The results of that work are available in the reports of the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The conclusion, as Holdren summed it up at his confirmation hearing recently: "Climate change is real, it's accelerating, it is caused in substantial part by human activity, it is dangerous and it is getting more so."

Like Holdren and other climate experts, Archer concludes that there's still time to cut fossil fuel emissions enough to avoid disaster.

"The question may come down to ethics, rather than economics," Archer wrote, much as the issue of slavery did more than a century ago. "Ultimately it didn't matter whether it was economically beneficial or costly to give up. It was simply wrong."

Some questions and answers with David Archer:

Q: You write that the climate effects of fossil fuel burning will last longer than nuclear waste. Most discussions of climate change focus on this century. Why did you look farther out?

A: Everyone knows that nuclear waste lasts a long time, and it seems to make a difference to them. It makes a difference to me the longevity of global warming, too.

Q: Some people, though, don't believe it's a problem.

A: There are people who will "believe" anything they want to; the question is whether anyone has a scientifically credible justification for that belief. It was predicted over a century ago that rising CO2 concentrations in the air would warm the planet. Now it seems to be doing just that, just as predicted. If anyone can explain why things should not work in this way, then I'd be interested to hear, but so far there are just no completing ideas, just beliefs stemming from whatever source, and an active campaign at disinformation sponsored by the fossil fuel industry.

Q: What difference does the long view make?

A: The book makes the point that global warming from CO2 emissions will last for thousands of years into the future. To me that changes the picture, especially when thinking about the economics of climate change or the possibility of "engineering" the planet cooler by putting haze in the stratosphere or something like that. It also means that the eventual sea level rise from releasing CO2 could be a hundred times greater than the forecast for the year 2100.

Q: Is Earth doomed to an ice-free state, mass extinctions and rising seas?

A: No, the damage has not yet been done. We could stop releasing CO2. Technologically that is not so hard.

Link to article: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/62735.html

Will-ful Deceit on Climate Change: Three Blunt Examples

As discussed in WashPost: Complicit in Disformation (or explicit collaboration)?, last Sunday's George Will column was a disgraceful example of distorted discussion of climate change issues. This deceitful piece and the Washington Post's seeming backing of it has created an uproar through the blogosphere that is seriously questioning what this sort of shoddy editorial management of opinion pages means for any Washington Post claim to journalistic integrity.

Now, this issue goes beyond this George F Will column to his serial stretching of fact to beyond the breaking point beyond truthiness. This issue goes beyond Will's repeated will-ful deceit to the repeated Post publication of deception, often dishonest opinion pieces related to global warming and climate challenges. This is more than about Will's deceit in Dark Green Doomsayers. Even so, it is worth returning to this specific deceitful piece to provide a simple summary of how it is deceitful with some quick references.

Here are just three of the explicit arenas of his deceit:

1. Claims that scientists (especially climatologists) were united in concerns over Global Cooling in 1970s. FALSE.
2. States that sea ice is same today as 1979. At best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.
3. States that there has been no global warming for a decade. At absolute best, misleading and disingenuous. And, his source disagrees with him.

"Global Cooling."

Will writes:

In the 1970s, "a major cooling of the planet" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950"

And, he has reference after reference seemingly nailing the coffin shut to prove this point. Only problem: it is not true that there was some form of scientific consensus around Global Cooling. Science works from hypothesis to testing of hypothesis to, if it stands up to testing, that hypothesis becoming a theory. Unlike Global Warming / Climate Change, which is a Theory, Global Cooling was never more than "hypothesis" and a "widely" disputed one at that. Last fall, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published the peer-reviewed review of this issue with the revealing title of The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. It begins

There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age. Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.

But, the true extent of Will's deceit goes further than this. One of the authors of this study, John Fleck, wrote both blog posts and an opinion piece following Will's article. In Cherry-Picked Facts Heat Up Climate Debate (which should be a must read for the Post's hand-picked fact checking team), Fleck points out that Will selectively quotes from articles, misrepresenting the actual conclusions. As to Will-ful deceit, Flect notes

When George Will last wrote about this subject, in May 2008, I sent him a copy of the 1975 Science News article, hoping he might get a fuller picture of what was going on at the time. I got a nice note back from him thanking me for sharing it. It doesn't seem as if he read it, which would have been nicer.

After a fact and truth filled piece, Fleck concludes:

George Will is entitled to his own opinions. He is not entitled to his own facts.

Correlation of Will comments with the truth? Zero.

See the rest of this post and the comments and A. Siegel's astute responses at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-siegel/will-ful-deceit-three-blu_b_168999.html

BLOGGER'S NOTE: Also from the Cryosphere: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf

Mass migrations and war: Dire climate scenario

by Charles J. Hanley, AP special correspondent, physorg.com, February 23, 2009

(AP) -- If we don't deal with climate change decisively, "what we're talking about then is extended world war," the eminent economist said.

His audience on Saturday, small and elite, had been stranded here by bad weather and were talking climate. They couldn't do much about the one, but the other was squarely in their hands. And so, Lord Nicholas Stern was telling them, was the potential for mass migrations setting off mass conflict.

"Somehow we have to explain to people just how worrying that is," the British economic thinker said.

Stern, author of a major British government report detailing the cost of climate change, was one of a select group of two dozen -- environment ministers, climate negotiators and experts from 16 nations -- scheduled to fly to Antarctica to learn firsthand how global warming might melt its ice into the sea, raising ocean levels worldwide.

Their midnight flight was scrubbed on Friday and Saturday because of high winds on the southernmost continent, 3,000 miles from here. While waiting at their Cape Town hotel for the gusts to ease down south, chief sponsor Erik Solheim, Norway's environment minister, improvised with group exchanges over coffee and wine about the future of the planet.

"International diplomacy is all about personal relations," Solheim said. "The more people know each other, the less likely there will be misunderstandings."

Understandings will be vital in this "year of climate," as the world's nations and their negotiators count down toward a U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in December, target date for concluding a grand new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol (the 1997 agreement, expiring in 2012) to reduce carbon dioxide and other global-warming emissions by industrial nations.

Solheim drew together key players for the planned brief visit to Norway's Troll Research Station in East Antarctica.

Trying on polar outfits for size on Friday were China's chief climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua, veteran U.S. climate envoy Dan Reifsnyder, and environment ministers Hilary Benn of Britain and Carlos Minc Baumfeld of Brazil.

Jose Endundo, environment minister of Congo, said he recently visited huge Lake Victoria in nearby Uganda, at 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles) a vital source for the Nile River, and learned the lake level had dropped 3 meters (10 ft.) in the past six years -- a loss blamed in part on warmer temperatures and diminishing rains.

In the face of such threats, "the rich countries have to give us a helping hand," the African minister said.

But it was Stern, former chief World Bank economist, who on Saturday laid out a case to his stranded companions in sobering PowerPoint detail.

If the world's nations act responsibly, Stern said, they will achieve "zero-carbon" electricity production and zero-carbon road transport by 2050 -- by replacing coal power plants with wind, solar or other energy sources that emit no carbon dioxide, and fossil fuel-burning vehicles with cars running on electric or other "clean" energy.

Then warming could be contained to a 2 °C (3.4 °F) rise this century, he said.

But if negotiators falter, if emissions reductions are not made soon and deep, the severe climate shifts and sea-level rises projected by scientists would be "disastrous."

It would "transform where people can live," Stern said. "People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move if you talk about 4-, 5-, 6-degree increases" (7-10 °F). And that would mean extended global conflict, "because there's no way the world can handle that kind of population move in the time period in which it would take place."

Melting ice, rising seas, dwindling lakes and war -- the stranded ministers had a lot to consider. But many worried, too, that the current global economic crisis will keep governments from transforming carbon-dependent economies just now. For them, Stern offered a vision of working today on energy-efficient economies that would be more "sustainable" in the future.

"The unemployed builders of Europe should be insulating all the houses of Europe," he said.

After he spoke, Norwegian organizers announced that the forecast looked good for Stern and the rest to fly south on Sunday to further ponder the future while meeting with scientists in the forbidding vastness of Antarctica.

Link to article: http://www.physorg.com/news154603945.html